1. Field of the Invention
Systems and methods for alerting authorities to fraud are disclosed. Specifically, methods for alerting the police, merchant, or third parties in near real-time to fraudulent debit or credit card transaction attempts at retail stores are disclosed.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In processing credit card, debit card, and other payment card and account transactions between customers and merchants, transaction data is accumulated by a card processing company through a payment processing system for each attempted transaction. Such transaction data typically includes an entry or “transaction record” for each transaction. Each transaction record includes data corresponding to one transaction. The transaction record can include a date and time at which the transaction was made, a cardholder account identifier (i.e., an account number of a customer), a merchant identifier (i.e., a name and address of the merchant, a unique merchant number, or a categorical grouping), the geographic location (e.g. the city or zip code) of the transaction, and the amount of the transaction and whether it was a debit or credit.
A customer or other person typically initiates a transaction by handing his or her portable consumer device (e.g., a credit card) to a store clerk who then swipes the card through a card reader. Some point of sale (POS) devices are set up so that the customer can swipe the card himself or herself through card readers.
Information about the attempted transaction is then transmitted from the card reader to the store's bank. The store's bank is sometimes called an “acquirer.” The acquirer and the merchant have a preexisting relationship for the acquirer to process credit card and other transactions for such sales through the store. After the information is received by the acquirer, the acquirer then requests forwards an authorization request to an issuer via a payment processing network.
The payment processing network can accept inputs (e.g. authorization requests for transactions) from acquirers and can forward the authorization requests to the institution that issued the cardholder's card account. This institution is sometimes called an “issuer.” The issuer can send an authorization response that will approve or decline the transaction depending on such factors as whether the cardholder has enough money in his account to cover the purchase. This approval/decline message can be sent back to the originating acquirer and to the originating merchant.
If the transaction was performed by someone committing fraud, such as by a person using a stolen credit card, the real accountholder may not be aware of the transaction until later. Typically, this would occur when the accountholder receives his or her monthly statement detailing all transactions for the month. The time that elapses from the fraudulent transaction until the accountholder recognizes the transaction on his or her monthly statement can be many days, such as up to 30 or 60 days, depending on the billing cycle. After such time has passed, the accountholder may not recognize the extra transaction(s) on the statement.
If and when the consumer does recognize the fraudulent transaction on his or her statement, the only recourse may be to contact the issuer. The issuer can then perform research about the transaction with the acquirer and the merchant. This can be a long and expensive procedure that typically takes place many days or months after the theft.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems.